HalfLife
by Showan
Summary: The story of Half-Life, with lots of alterations. I would be grateful for any feedback, opinions, insults, nitpicking comments, etc. Chapter 2 is now finished. It's getting a little gory, but anyone who has played the game should expect that.
1. Chapter 1

I obviously don't own Half-Life or anything to do with it. I've followed most of the story from the game, but changed a lot of things about it. I'm not sure how closely I'll follow the game yet, if you have any suggestions or recommendations, please tell me. I need as many reviews as possible.  
  
Thanks,  
  
Showan.  
  
  
  
Half-Life  
  
Gordon Freeman rubbed his eyes as the mono-rail door snapped open. "Good morning, sir," the guard gave him a nod and continued, "You're late, sir. Everyone else's waiting."  
  
Gordon Freeman hurried through the heavy air-lock doors and down the corridor of the Black Mesa Underground Research Facility. Being underground still made Gordon edgy, even though he'd worked here for years. Shaking off his claustrophobia, he jogged through another set of doors and into the reception room.  
  
"Freeman, you should have been here half an hour ago!" Jeremy Thune, the chief scientist, scowled at Gordon. "I shouldn't need to tell you the importance of this experiment. Get down to the test chamber and do it quickly. This will go on your record."  
  
Gordon deliberately stepped on his toe as he ran out into another corridor. Painted on the wall were three coloured stripes. Gordon followed the yellow one, marked 'Equipment and Preparation Block' until it split away from the others at the next T-junction. He arrived at his destination, the Protective Equipment Locker, and ran to where the Hazardous Environment Vitalsuits were kept.  
  
The HEVs were the latest creation from Black Mesa's military research. The suits were still in their early stages of design, but they acted as armour as well as scanning the body for wounds. They could also heal, when fuelled with antibiotics from first aid packs. Most scientists and guards used these, but Gordon's position as senior Theoretical Physicist gave him many priveliges and he had been channelling money into HEV research for a while.  
  
Gordon's upgraded suit was capable of enhancing jumping and running ability, it did all the things the previous models did but more effectively, and it also had several pockets and compartments for weapons and ammo. Gordon had told as few people as possible about these; his brother had joined the army and Gordon had wondered about future models being issued to the soldiers.  
  
The suit was bright orange with a light metal breastplate which sprouted cables running all around the body. Gordon pulled himself into it, and clipped shut the steel cuffs on his wrists and legs. Then he turned and charged out, searching for the test chamber. With the HEV on, it was as if a very strong wind was pushing behind him as he ran, and he was there in minutes.  
  
"It's about time, Freeman." The scientist, Kenyon, who opened the door looked greatly relieved. "We thought something had happened. Now we can begin."  
  
Gordon walked into the control and survey room, where three other scientists and a security guard were waiting. One wall of the room was transparent, and past it the test chamber was still being prepared. Gordon bristled with annoyance. Why was everyone getting at him for being late when they hadn't even finished getting ready anyway?  
  
Kenyon was speaking into a recorder in one of the many consoles in the room. "Experiment summary: Applying a high frequency electrical charge to a resonance crystal. Aim: To cause simualtaneous annihilation and create a sustained breach in three dimensional space." Kenyon's voice shook with excitement, and Gordon was suddenly reminded of the situation. He began to shake too.  
  
They had discovered atomic resonance about a year ago, and had been studying it ever since. The strange matter possessed unexplainably weird properties and had puzzled all Black Mesa's most accomplished scientists, until Kenyon Johnson arrived. Kenyon applied the incredible 'multiverse' theory, hitherto dismissed as being crazily far fetched, and found that the resonance was suddenly explained.  
  
This of course meant that other universes may exist, and that the resonance could be used to attract resonance from other universes, effectively pulling two universes together, creating a portal between them. Very few of the scientists believed this, nor did Gordon himself to begin with, but more and more evidence proved Kenyon's theory right, so he was allowed to perform his experiment. The officials had kept it a secret, and many other scientists were strongly opposed to testing the idea, because of the high risk involved. Kenyon had booked the largest, most secure test chamber in case the project blew up.  
  
Kenyon had finished recording the test, and was hopping up and down in tension. The others were nervously tapping their feet or biting their nails. Eventually, the technicians finished the job and filed out. Kenyon wasted no time. "Okay. Gordon, get down into the chamber. Everyone to your respective monitors, Jack, give me full command of the spectrometer and switch on the cameras. Hurry up!"  
  
Trembling, Gordon left the room, practicly fell down several ladders in his haste, and sped through some more passageways before reaching the bomb- proof air-lock doors. Embedded in the wall were two square boxes. One was white with a red cross. A screen on it read: FIRST AID CHARGE: 100%. The other one was orange, with HEV fuel in it. Gordon plugged in to both of them, and clipped on the eye pieces to his suit. In the corner of his eye, little letters appeared: BODY HEALTH: 100% ARMOUR: 100%.  
  
Kenyon's voice erupted from the microphones in the walls, making Gordon jump. "Gordon Freeman, prepare to enter the test chamber." The clunky doors ground open, Gorden stepped into a small chamber, they shut behind him. This was it. He could barely believe it was happening even now.  
  
The doors up ahead opened. Slowly, Gordon edged towards them. hen he got a grip on himself, stopped, and strode confidently forward. The test chamber was massive, it was like entering a cathedral. In the centre were five power generators in a circle. Colossal cylinders of metal hung from the ceiling, all with power cables running to the main one, which was above the generators. A computer screen flickered to life in the far wall, and displayed a diagram of two resonance crystals gravitating towards each other and annihilate. Then it was replaced by a diagram of the universe as a thick blue line, and the theoretical one next to it as a red one. If the experiment worked, they should bend just slightly until the middles touched each other.  
  
"Get ready, Gordon. The crystal is arriving now." A hatchway opened, and a trolley slid out. On it, the resonance crystal sat, like a black rock, nothing special to look at. Gordon wheeled it along, until the crystal sat in the shaft between the generators. "Stand back, Gordon. I'm starting the spetrometer. Operating electricity duct, minimal power."  
  
A thin, crackling beam shot straight down into the resonance crystal. The rock absorbed it quietly, showing no sign of action. "Increasing to level two power." The beam grew thicker and brighter. Gordon screwed up his eyes to look at it. The stone emitted a spattering of sparks, and remained doing so steadily. Gordon glanced at the diagram, but it had not altered.  
  
"Increasing to level three." The beam flashed even brighter. Gordon looked away, dazzled. He heard Jack's voice speak to Kenyon.  
  
"Sir! Look at these readings!"  
  
"Oh my God... Quickly, cancel all power! We've got a resonance cascade! It's reacting too fast... aaah!" Gordon looked back to the crystal. The sparks had consumed it, and were spreading fast. Gordon watched it horror as the electricity cut off, but the sparks did not stop. He took a step back as the shower of light grew brighter...  
  
Then disappeared, leaving a pure black hole in reality.  
  
Gordon's eyes widened, and he caught a glimpse of the computer screen diagram. Red and blue crashed together, creating a random pattern of flickering stripes... Then the universe collapsed on him.  
  
Suddenly he was standing in the middle of a barren rocky mountainside, grey- brown rock littered with spiky purple lichen-like things, then he was on a beach in what looked like Florida. He tried to move, and the world stretched-- and he was in mid-air over an enormous alien landscape. His insides pulled him down, but already the scene had changed. Reality flickered and warped around him, his surroundings flashing from familiar places to the dark, nightmarish alien landscape. He saw deep pools, weird spongy rocks, large mushroom-like things, tiny little glowing stalks... all in the same evil purplish light. This world was inhabited, too, but with nothing even remotely humanoid. They were ghastly, hellish monsters that sent chills down Gordon's spine. Then explosions started, filling Gordon's sight with fire and sound. The changing and roaring grew rapidly faster, until everything was a furious blur of energy...  
  
Then he landed with a painful thud, back in the test chamber. Home. But even as he pulled himself up, he saw that evil planet, as if a slash had been cut out of the room, and that was behind it. Then space seemed to pull itself together, shutting it out, and Gordon was left alone in the chamber.  
  
The machinery was blackened, strewn around the hall in tatters. An enormous bar of steel crashed into the floor, and Gordon looked up to see the heavy metal poles dangling dangerously from the roof on cables that were quickly giving way. The walls were cracked and full of holes, the door was the same. Gordon ran, stumbling on debris that littered the ground, and threw himself toward the door as another steel rod came tumbling down...  
  
Half the door had fallen away, and Gordon could just crawl through. Alarms were screaming as he ran through the air-lock chamber, and he hammered on the outer door controls, but they wouldn't open. He was trapped in until Kenyon gave the order to release him. Refusing to give in, he jogged back into the chamber and found the smallest piece of metal he could. He jogged back, and rammed the stake into the machinery, the box cracked open, and he nervously fiddled with the wires.  
  
The doors groaned open, and he stepped out into the corridor to see the full havoc their experiment had caused. 


	2. Chapter 2

I obviously don't own Half-Life or anything to do with it. I've followed most of the story from the game, but changed a lot of things about it. I'm not sure how closely I'll follow the game yet, if you have any suggestions or recommendations, please tell me. I need as many reviews as possible.  
  
Thanks,  
  
Showan.  
  
  
  
Half-Life  
  
"Mr Freeman! What the hell happened in there?" The guard on duty charged up to him, panic stricken. He was shouting over the alarms.  
  
"What happened out here?" yelled back Freeman. How much had the world outside the test chamber been affected? The noise of the warning sirens was drilling through his head now. Even the walls were shaking.  
  
Then the wall disappeared, and Gordon once again stared into the nightmare world. This time he saw its natives up close. The guard next to him cried out in surprise, and the scene sunk away into the wall.  
  
But the creatures did not. Four of them sat, bemused, on the ground. They were small, about the size of a human head, and had a soft, fleshy shell with tiny red, scuttling legs underneath. One of them suddenly launched itself on to Gordon's face. He yelled as he felt its limbs clutch his head. He tried to pull it off, but it was much stronger then it looked. A loud bang deafened his ears, and the crab fell limp, landing on the floor in a spreading pool of green blood.  
  
The other three creatures attacked, crawling and leaping towards them. The guard opened fire, but the shots weren't as effective at longer range, and the crabs's pale shells swallowed many more bullets before they collapsed in blood. "Flippin' 'eck," gasped the guard. "If that's going on everywhere..." They both looked at each other, the realisation evident on their faces. "We'd got to alert the rest of the base, and fast!"  
  
"We'll find Kenyon. He knows more then us about the whole experiment. He might know how to sort this out." Seeing the man's doubtful expression, Gordon added, "It's worth a try, although I think we're all out of our depth here." They set off at a sprint toward the survey room.  
  
"Watch out!" They skidded to a halt, nearly tripping over the technicians's tool trolley that blocked the path. "What the heck's this doing here?" asked the guard.  
  
"Look!" Gordon pointed. The technician was writhing around further down the passageway. "He's being attacked by one of those crab things!" The guard raised his gun, "You can't aim safely from here!" Gordon grabbed a crowbar off the trolley and ran to help the man. He had stopped moving now, and just stood, letting himself be devoured. Gordon yelled, trying to distract the crab's attention. Then the man struck out with a hand, and clawed Gordon across the face. Gordon stumbled in shock, and the man took another drunken swipe at him. He dodged, and neatly scooped the crab off the man's face with his crowbar.  
  
The technician's head was an empty, bloody shell. A strange white tentacle stretched from deep in his neck to the underbelly of the head-crab on the floor. "That thing's taken control of him!" shouted the guard, as he caught up. The dead technician swung around to attack him, but the guard grabbed the tentacle and wrenched it out. The man collapsed to the floor, and Gordon, filled with rage and horror, stamped on the head-crab, until green blood spurted from it.  
  
They both stood still, numb with shock at the dead man lying before them. Dead. The full horror of what that meant became painfully clear to Gordon. He knew, with deadly certainty, that before the day was over, many more would be like that. He pulled himself together. If there weren't many of the creatures, and they warned the officials quickly enough, maybe they could stop too many deaths.  
  
"It must tap into other creatures's nervous systems." he said, after flicking the thing's corpse off his foot. "That means there must be other things on its planet for it to tap into." He fervently hoped that there weren't any of them loose in the building. He didn't think they were any more friendly.  
  
They jogged as fast as they could to Kenyon's survey chamber, Gordon had to smash the glass out of most of the doors so they could get through. "The resonance cascade must have shorted out the power." He stopped to take his bearings. Everything seemed so different, in the dark, stinking of death and fear. He pointed to the end of the corridor: "They should be up there, just around that corner."  
  
The door beside him abruptly exploded, and a foul, reptillian, chicken-like thing pounded out. It was surrounded by head-crabs, and it was picking them off with bursts of greenish ink from the tentacled hole that should have been its head. The guard next to him shot it , with no effect except to make the thing turn around and charge at them, firing high powered jets of gunky ink from its mouth, which was surrounded by a ring of feelers. The gunk spattered fiercely against the wall, splashing Gordon. He dodged the fire, but did not retreat as it hurtled towards him. He waited until it was only a foot away, and stabbed his crowbar straight through its body, pulling up as the weapon ripped a fatal slash in it.  
  
"Good hit, Mr Freeman," said the guard, reloading his gun. He shot a surviving head-crab twice, and fell dead. "Got another one." he smiled in satisfaction.  
  
"Thanks. We'd better find Kenyon quick... Oh heck... If there're any more of those lizard things, they could be in trouble." Gordon ran, desperately. Kenyon was the one he'd been relying on to sort everything out. It was a crazy, irrational idea, but Kenyon knew more then anyone about the project. Maybe he would know some way to save the situation.  
  
If he didn't, or was killed now, the entire Black Mesa Research Facility would be evacuated and left to these creatures, and soon they'd start to spread. It suddenly hit Gordon that he didn't know how far they'd been spread anyway. For all he knew, they could be all over America. Then help would never come.  
  
They pelted around the corner, dreading what they would see. Four more lizards had indeed found Kenyon's survey room, and were viciously attacking the door. It was covered in emerald slime, riddled with tiny dents, and now the beasts were physically ramming it. It bent inwards under the impact, then it gave way.  
  
"No!" yelled Gordon as the lizards surged through. He caught them up, and impaled one with his crowbar. The guard pummelled another with bullets. They leapt over the corpses and entered the room.  
  
The stench of blood slapped Gordon in the face. Everything was drenched in it, soaked in crimson or emerald death. The two remaining lizards were going after yet more head-crabs, which the scientists had clearly been fending off. They all held makeshift clubs, aside from the three lying dead on the ground, head-crabs burrowing into their brains. Kenyon wasn't with the ones who were alive.  
  
Head-crabs were dropping from a hole in the ceiling. The guard swiftly opened fire, killing them all before they hit the ground. Gordon slaughtered a lizard, letting the other one finish off the last head-crab before slashing its insides over the floor. The surviving scientists breathed simualtaneous sighs of relief.  
  
"Gordon! Thank God you're here! We thought the crystal's implosion had killed you!" Gordon didn't speak. He was staring dully at the carcusses littered casually around him. "Gordon?"  
  
"Kenyon's plan worked. The border world and ours were pulled together. You applied too much power." Gordon felt as if he would be sick. "I was sucked right into Kenyon's new universe." He shivered, but seemed to recover from his shock. "How far have these creatures got? How serious is it?"  
  
"It could be worse than anything humanity has ever seen." Gordon turned. Kenyon was sitting in the corner, his knee bleeding freely. "I didn't expect a delayed reaction from the crystals. The resonance attraction was way too big. The portal has created what I can only call interdimensional ripples. Our space is grazing against the border world's, and we don't know how far these will spread. They will peter out eventually, but how many of those creatures will have invaded by then?"  
  
The guard spoke. "We should contact the officials immediately. Call the military and tell them what's happened. They can come and get us out of here."  
  
Another scientist nodded, Gordon recognised him as Joseph Cleranse. "We've tried to set up a communication, but all power's out. Bonar said he managed to, but he's not sure if they recieved it."  
  
"Where's Bonar?" Jo pointed over to the other side of the room. A man in a guard's uniform was collapsed against the wall, his face a mangled mess and blood pouring down his body.  
  
Gordon was silent. Then he said, "We'd better get out of here. We'll see if we can make it out of the tunnels, above ground. We'll be safer out in the desert then in here. We should take as much supplies as possible."  
  
"Does anyone have a map of this place? I know the way to the artillary bunker, but apart from that and my patrol zone, I'm lost."  
  
"All our maps were on the computers, and now the electricity's down. If we found our way back to reception, we could follow the arrows on the wall."  
  
"Whatever we do, we can't afford to wait around. Heaven knows how many more crabs and lizards could suddenly appear behind that door. We'll go to the artillary room, and get some weapons. We'd best get straight out then. Any food or other supplies would put us in more danger, and probably be spoiled anyway. Do you think those aliens are edible?"  
  
"I doubt it. They can obviously survive in air, and they have similar nervous and respiritory systems, but it's way too much of a risk."  
  
"I suppose so." Swallowing back a mouthful of vomit, Gordon took all the blood sodden guns and ammo packs from the dead Bonar. He shared them out equally between the unarmed scientists, and gave the guard some extra ammunition. "Well, let's go then." 


End file.
